It has been 50 years since President John F. Kennedy ordered U.S. “advisers” to South Vietnam to
help battle the communist North and 37 years since the end of that divisive war and the country’s
unification under Communism.

Today, Vietnam is fighting a war with itself.

A local TV program reminds a visitor of Chinese propaganda “operas” circa 1970. Performers, some
wearing military garb with a backdrop of missiles and an American B-52 bomber going down in flames,
commemorate the 1972 Christmas bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong ordered by President Richard Nixon.
Banners and posters in the streets reinforce the government’s history lesson.

Younger people, who substantially outnumber the old guard, seem mostly indifferent to these
messages, because few lived through the war. An American official tells me just 4 percent of the
population belongs to the Communist Party.

While there are large pockets of poverty between and even within major cities like Ho Chi Minh
City, Da Nang and Hanoi, prosperity is making inroads. The 1-year-old Da Nang airport is more
modern than some U.S. airports. Luxury hotels, clothing stores and restaurants abound. While many
cater to foreign travelers, many locals wear stylish Western clothes and transport themselves on
motorbikes and in cars. Twenty years ago, the primary mode of transportation was the bicycle.

Vietnam eagerly wants to conclude a trade agreement with the United States known as TPP. Among
other things, it would allow for more capital investment and more Vietnamese goods to be sold in
the United States. Deputy Foreign Minister Nguyen Phuong Nga tells me that since normalization of
relations in 1995, the U.S. has become the “eighth-biggest foreign investor in Vietnam,” totaling
$10 billion.

U.S. officials say human-rights issues, including more religious freedom, are holding up
American approval of the new trade deal. I asked Madame Nga about this and the recent sentencing of
three bloggers to between four and 12 years in prison for criticizing the government.

She deflects the question by noting press criticism of government corruption (true) and claims
people have freedom of speech so long as they do not cause “harm,” a word open to interpretation in
a one-party state.

Vietnam recently opened two new areas to exploration for the bodies of American soldiers missing
in action. Madame Nga says Vietnam has “actively worked with and supported the U.S. in finding the
MIAs during the last 20 years,” but notes that on the Vietnamese side “about 3 million MIAs remain
to be found.”

As in many other one-party states, the Internet remains a powerful counterforce to managed
information. The U.S. Embassy provides, and the government mostly allows, an information center
where students and others can log onto iPads and find information that is often counter to the
government line.

The old guard remains suspicious about American objectives, seeing economic and political
liberalization as a strategy to achieve among the Vietnamese people what America failed to in
pursuing their “hearts and minds” in the war.

Professor Carlyle A. Thayer of the University of New South Wales, an expert on Vietnam, said
recently, “Vietnam is motivated to keep the U.S. engaged in Southeast Asia, and the South China Sea
in particular, as a balance to China,” which claims some territorial rights in conflict with
Vietnam and is a formidable economic and military power on its northern border.

Vietnam is in transition, and it is unrealistic to expect too much progress too quickly.
Considering where it was when the U.S. left in 1975, the country appears to be inching in a
positive direction. Those Americans who died in Vietnam left behind the seeds of democracy,
capitalism and a desire for prosperity and freedom. Whatever one’s view of that war, it can be said
they did not die in vain.